• Porsche 911 Service Clinics take place on October 16 at Porsche Centres nationwide
• Accompanied complimentary inspections with a Porsche technician

With over three quarters of all Porsches ever sold still on the road, Porsche is celebrating the tenacity of its most iconic model, the 911, by inviting owners to a Service Clinic¹ at their local Porsche Centre on Saturday October 16.

The national Porsche 911 Service Clinic provides owners with a complimentary inspection and the opportunity to accompany the technician and view their car in a state of the art Porsche workshop. Owners can experience first hand the passion and expertise of the technicians devoted to ensuring the cars continue to deliver maximum performance and driving pleasure.

In celebration of the 911 range and for customers to learn more about their model’s heritage and technical highlights, each Porsche Centre will showcase a classic 911 display, provide four wheel alignment demonstrations and invite visitors to enter a prize draw offering the chance to win a detailed 1:18 scale model of the Porsche 901 (1964) from the Porsche Design Driver’s Selection range.

The Porsche 911 Service Clinic follows the highly successful Boxster Service Clinic held earlier in the year, which serviced over 440 Porsche Boxsters around the country in one day.

1.  The Porsche 911 Service Clinic inspections are by prior appointment only and available on a first come first served basis. To learn more about the Service Clinics, owners should contact their nearest Porsche Centre or call 08457 911 911.

I’ve just collected a beautiful 1998 996 Carrera and was stunned at how wonderful it was to drive.

The 996 has got a bit of a bad reputation and I think that’s partly because some of the early examples are so neglected. This car, though, has been cherished and feels and drives like the true 911 it is. It’s a great colour combination, too, and incredible value for money.

Click here for the full details of what I think is the best early 996 I’ve seen for a long time.

I was looking at a rather nice 997 Cabriolet the other day. As always, I check through the options codes (which are found on a sticker at the front of the service book). The first code is always the country the car was built for and I’m used to seeing C16, which is the UK code.

However, this car had the code C98 which I knew from past experience means it was made for Cyprus. Now, a few years ago, it was quite common for UK dealers to order brand-new Porsches from Cyprus and sell them in the UK at a discounted price. It seems to happen less now that UK car prices have dropped in relation to other parts of Europe.

I was fairly sure there was no spec differences between UK and Cyprus Porsches but would this code affect the car’s future value? I rang up a contact at an Official Porsche Centre and he was adamant it wouldn’t, saying that he was always happen to take C98 cars in and sell them.

It takes a lot to make this cross but a book that landed on my desk the other day really got my hackles up.

It’s called The Affordable Porsche and is published by Haynes, so I had high hopes of it. After all, Haynes has a good reputation and I’ve long advocated that Porsche ownership should be affordable.

However, the more I read the book, the more it annoyed me. The laddish writing style grated but I could just about cope with it. What I couldn’t handle, though, were some of the sweeping statements. Here are some examples:

“The 911 was made from 1963 to 1996′ Er, then what are all those new cars in Porsche dealerships, then?

“A left-hand drive car is 25% cheaper in the UK.” Not for the last couple of years they’re not, since the value of the euro encouraged Continental buyers to snap them up.

And that’s just a couple of many.

The author suggests buying a Porsche with no service history if you want a bargain. Now, I can see his point here as a car with no history will usually be worth less. However, his argument for doing so is because garages are dishonest and therefore any service history is not worth much – even from a Porsche dealer. I’m sure all the hard-working Porsche specialists I know would be offended by that.

The book also says that a 911 from the 1970s is the most affordable option and that body and engine repairs can be done at home. Now, these cars are often very rusty and have a complex body structure that isn’t easy to repair, even if you are handy with a welder. An apparent bargain can turn out to be very expensive.

Oddly, the 993 is included as an ‘affordable’ Porsche but the newer 996, which you can pick up for less than a 993 and is the bargain of the year, doesn’t even get a mention.

What makes me angry is that this book has a tempting title which will encourage people to buy it and then unsuspectingly buy a totally unsuitable Porsche that could end up costing them dearly in the long run. And that will then sour the ownership experience for them and maybe even put them off buying another 911.

I’m not keen on buying Porsches at auctions. I’d much rather deal with an individual – private or dealer – who knows the car and can let me test drive it.

I looked at a 911 Cabriolet at auction recently that was particularly disappointing.

It was advertised as a 1985 3.0-litre 911 which immediately puzzled me – at that age, it should be 3.2-litres. When I saw the car, it didn’t take long to realise that it was, in fact, a 911SC – the rear badging and the engine were giveaways. A flick through the documentation showed that it was a 1982 car that had been first registered in the UK in 1985. I couldn’t determine where the car had been before that, because the service book and options label under the bonnet were both missing, although the drivers’ manual was in German (it was a right-hand drive car, though).

Further delving into the paperwork showed that the V5 document registered the car as being orange, although I could see it was now Grand Prix White. The previous owner had obviously not informed the DVLA of this.

The paintwork was of a good standard but very fresh – worryingly so. The auction house said that the car had recently had a full body restoration, which can be good news, but there was no paperwork to show what work had been done, which was bad news. More worrying was the black underseal painted around inside of the luggage compartment, plus evidence of welding work in the base of this area (I could see all this easily, as the spare wheel and tool kit were both missing) The same black gunk lined the engine bay.

Later-style Cup wheels and mirrors weren’t my taste for a car this age, but I know some people like them.

Opening the doors, they  scraped against the catches; possibly suggesting that the entire body was out of wack – common with a Cabriolet if the sills have lost their strength and/or have not been repaired correctly.

Inside, the dash and door tops had been retrimmed – to a high standard, granted – with perforated leather. Trendy, perhaps, but not right on a car of this age. The doors had been treated to RS-style pulls and simple metal grab handles, while four out of five dials had white bezels. The carpet was new but not to original standard and – most worryingly – had been effectively glued to the floor so I couldn’t see the condition of the metal below.

Also inside, I found the foglight switch lying loose in the glovebox, while the heater controller felt as if it wasn’t connected.

Finally, underneath the engine, one of the oil-pipe unions was leaking enthusiastically.

So, all in all, not one of the best Porsches I’ve seen, despite a glowing description in the auction catalogue. The guide price was £10,000 to £13,000; it finally sold for £9400 which I think is still too much for a car with such a dodgy provenance.

The key thing here is that there is nothing I found that no one else could have spotted, and it just shows that it pays to be careful when buying any secondhand car, especially a Porsche.

Traditionally, dealers have charged more for cars than private sellers. That makes sense, a dealer is in it to make money, has overheads to cover and usually has to offer more in the way of a warranty on the car.

However, I’ve been noticing a strange trend recently. Most of the super-cheap Porsche 996s on the market are the ones being sold by dealers. Here’s an example I picked by random from Pistonheads but there are plenty more like it. Just £14,000 for a 2000 911 has to be a good deal. OK, it’s a Tiptronic in an odd colour and the Ruffled grey leather interior doesn’t help but even so…

Now, go and look for an equivalent 911 being sold privately and you’ll struggle to find any for under £15,000, even early 1998 examples.

Why is this? Well, I’m not sure at the moment but I’d welcome suggestions. Are dealers being more realistic about value than private owners?

Sat-navs are commonplace these days – you even have them on mobile phones. However, back in 1997, they were still considered state of the art and Porsche had yet to offer one as a optional extra.

So this caught my eye today. It was inside a 993 and, apparently, the car’s first owner had paid a lot of money to have it professionally installed. It looks like a factory installation with the correct leather trim around and fits in perfectly with the 993 cockpit.

The unit is controlled by a rotary switch positioned behind the handbrake lever and, amazingly, it still works perfectly, with a very well spoken female voice giving directions.

Now, with the later 996 I often advise people to take out the PCM satnav because it’s so dated and it’s hard to get replacement mapping CDs for. However, in this case, it’s great that this aftermarket accessory has remained with the car. It’s very much part of the Porsche’s history and, as far as I know, it’s unique. Fantastic!

I had an email the other day from someone who’d spotted a 1974 2.7 Carrera coming up for auction with a guide price of £18,000. My initial reaction was that this sounded cheap and gave him the usual caveats about rust and so on. Buying a supposed bargain can end up costing you dearly if the bodywork needs attention because of corrosion – and many 911s of this age do need at least some rust sorting out.

I suggested he got someone local to check the car out beforehand, which he did, and the inspection concluded that the car needed about £8000 spending on it to get it up to standard. Apparently, there was evidence of a front-end impact that hadn’t been properly rectified but, that apart, the bodywork was good.

My chap went along to the auction, hoping to be driving home in a classic 911 but he was disappointed. The car sold for £30,000, which was out of his price bracket, especially considering the extra work that was required. I wonder if the final buyer was aware of what needed to be done to the car.

This does show, though, that prices of classic 911s are holding up well, as people turn to them as a better investment than money in the bank.

I’ve created a new cover for my You Can Drive a Porsche eBook. Why? Because the old one looked too fussy and hard to see on iBooks. The new cover is much cleaner and simpler. I’d be interested to hear what others think of it.

Well, not exactly. However, this car is partway there.

It is, in fact, a 996 Turbo that’s been given a 997 front end – an increasingly common upgrade which, I think, works well, even if, as here, the 996 rear end is retained (Porscheshop, by the way, offers neat LED 996 rear lights that go some way to update the look).

The car’s a 2002 model with just 37,000 miles on the clock and has the worthwhile X50 engine upgrade (which was used in the 996 Turbo S) that ups power to 450bhp, plus a sports exhaust. According to the advert is has a good service history and was last serviced 1000 miles ago.

All sounds good news and, yes, 996 Turbo prices have dropped but surely it should be worth a bit more than £27,000. £32,000 would be more like it.

Well, it’s a Cat D car. Now, I’ve blogged about these before and I reckon they can be a safe bet, if they’re mechanically sound are priced correctly. The seller doesn’t say in the advert why the car was written off, so you’d need to uncover the whole story. If it all checks out well, it would be an exciting purchase.